Ecological Mangrove Rehabilitation - An Introduction

It’s not emergency medical rescue, though it feels a bit like it. Nor is it about atom-spinning electromagnetic radiation. Ecological mangrove rehabilitation is a process developed by Robin Lewis and Mangrove Action Project that, in partnership with the local people, tries to re-establish a functioning mangrove ecosystem. It is often described in six steps.

Summary of the Theory
1. Know the mangroves species around your site and the species you want, their ecology / reproduction / biology.
2. Understand what these species need in terms of water flow, salinity, sun/shade levels flooding, soil types etc
3. Site history. What’s changed on your site? What’s stopping natural regeneration from happening? Was it originally mangrove?
4. Thus, do you have an appropriate site to restore? Can you fix what’s been changed? Has land ownership become an issue? Ie can you fix point three to provide suitable conditions identified in point two.
5. Fix the hydrology to allow natural regeneration to occur.
6. Only plant if the natural regeneration is either too little or arriving and establishing too slowly for your goals. [And even if you have to plant, you still need to do stages 1-5.]


This post should be read in conjunction with the other examples and details on Mangrove Action Project’s EMR web page. The reason for this blog is to describe an actual muddy case history.

So What Has Happened At Band Lang Da?
The theory is all good and lovely. Of course it makes lots of sense. And the science supports it. But EMR happens in a social context. Therefore the process starts with the community, talking and listening. What do they need? It might not be mangrove help. What are their concerns? Shockingly they have other thoughts on their minds than wall-to-wall mangroves. Do they know about mangrove rehabilitation already? (Do not assume that just because a community uses mangroves, they know how to manage a mangrove resource, cf Easter Island.) In our case, if this pond was mangroves again, what species would they value and use? Is there some other problem that is indirectly affecting the mangroves or the conditions and resources around it, like poverty? Happily at BLD no great social problems have emerged. Krabi town is nearby, which offers alternative employment opportunities. And though they use Nypa, their concerns centre more on rubbish collection, refining their crab rearing skills and the quality of the expelled water from the nearby active shrimp ponds.
If at all possible make the community feel as though the whole rehabilitation process is theirs, not yours, including the analysis of the problem and the formulation of the solution. The more participation by the community and the earlier, the better. Development history is littered with failed projects, in all sorts of areas and disciplines, due to ignoring the wishes of the local people and not getting them genuinely involved at the outset. Clearly, this level of (full) participation is an ideal situation and something to strive for. But in reality a local community has its own constraints of time, interest levels and other commitments, as well as the issues the BLD folk have mentioned already. The poorer members in particular might be so busy trying to earn enough to feed their families that they cannot attend meetings to voice an opinion, despite being concerned, interested or indeed directly affected. And a lack of education makes people (again often the poorer members) hesitant to voice an opinion.

One way to involve them in the initial EMR process is to ask the local people a series of questions, rather than lecture to them, so as they arrive at the EMR solution themselves. As they develop answers, these will naturally be tailored to their situation and needs. Another way to involve the community, and particularly if they are not so knowledgeable about their mangroves, is to run an EMR training session at a more technical level, or at a more community/ fisherman level (what MAP calls In The Hands of the Fishers) and environmental education for the children. Again, this will be covered in another posting later on, but is also featured on MAP’s site. Please get in contact if you are thinking about running one of these sessions.

At Bang Lang Da we have spent time discussing the issues and problems with the site, and other topics mentioned above. We have not involved them as much as we might in this case as we ourselves want to do the work, for our own education. But we have spent time getting to know the people and letting them know us. There is a coffee shop in the middle of the community and we stop off there for a drink and chat whenever we go to the site. Needless to say, I struggle with this because of the language barrier, but the people of BLD have been very tolerant, considering how limited my Thai is.
On a more practical level there are a couple of things that we did early on that we hope will save a lot of grief later. The first was to sort out who owns the land. Often this is ill-defined, with questionable tenure, lack of documentary evidence, poor enforcement of the law, conflicting laws, land grabs, the unclear status of community lands and so on. Asking these questions might be stirring up some latent community conflict. But there is no point rehabilitating a site to see it turned into a 7-11 shop a year later. At BLD we had to work a bit to find the owner, but when we did it turned out that he was at school with the boss of Wetlands International (Thailand), - a lucky break. So even though land control appears on point four, do it as part of the initial discussions with the community. At this point a funder would probably want to see a written agreement between the owner and the NGO. We have a Memorandum of Understanding with the owner so we all know what is expected.

You’ll notice that what we have not done yet is start to build a nursery. Do not do it.

The second issue to consider early on, despite the six steps and their order, is to have a rapid but honest assessment of whether the site being proposed is suitable. There is no point going through all the stages and ticking the boxes to get to stage five and find that tidal flush will just never get to your amended site, whatever you do. Or that grazing livestock cannot be controlled and fencing is out of the question. Be realistic. For that reason, early in the process and explaining to the community what we were doing, we surveyed the site topography in detail, as we feared the site was too low. Another blog post will cover what we did and how, later on.
In the next few weeks more blogs will be posted about how we are proceeding with the EMR process in BLD. Please get in contact if you have any questions you think we might be able to help with. Chok dee, na.